In the BSI Journal 1983 pages 151-155 Weber described T. gutteana and said it differed from T. macbrideana L.B. Smith by its acaule habit, an inflorescence shorter than the leaves and the lepidote posterior much-higher-connate sepals. These differences check out when you refer to Smith and Downs page 810 and fig. 252 B-D. However, the whole of the sepal detail is missing in Weber's description and you need to refer to his drawing for this information! I do not have access to Feddes Repertorium Vol 94 to check the Latin description but in a personal communication in Dec. 1996 Dr. Walter Till confirmed that the sepals are lepidote and connate for more than one half.
Let us now refer to Bromelienstudien XVII 1985 by Werner Rauh. To help me understand his varieties of T. macbrideana and his then new species T. pseudomacbrideana I designed a Key which is as follows;
| 1. | Plant | - long stemmed | 2 |
| - short stemmed | 4 | ||
| 2. | Leaf | - dark violet, narrowly attenuate, scape not visible, spike simple to 5cm long, to 10 flowered, mostly bent sideways, flower bracts pink | var. atroviolacea |
| - grey/white, scape not visible | 3 | ||
| 3. | Leaf | - 3 - 4cm long; Spike to 4cm long, 5 - 10 flowered, rhachis exposed | var. macbrideana |
| - 10cm long. Spike to 7cm long, 15 flowered | var. major | ||
| 4. | Scape | - Not visible, leaves to 10cm long, erect, stiff, spike to 15cm long, rhachis not visible, floral bracts dark-carmine | var. longispica |
| - visible | 5 | ||
| 5. | Sepals | - glabrous, petals to 2.8cm long dark-pink, filaments straight, leaves to 15cm long with curled tips. Inflorescence simple, sub-dense | var. longifolia |
| - lepidote, petals to 3.7cm long, pale-mauve filaments plicate, leaves to 19cm long, erect or curved, inflorescence simple or with 1 or 2 short side-spikes, rhachis slightly visible | pseudomacbrideana | ||
Using this key I was unable to place T. gutteana, let alone link it with var. major! However, it is clearly in this complex.
Werner Rauh makes a comment in a footnote on page 30 of Bromelienstudien XVII 1985 that he believes that T. gutteana is synonymous with T. macbrideana. Remember that this is the paper where he describes the varieties of T. macbrideana and a new species T. pseudomacbrideana. It is strange indeed that he did not attempt to bring this plant into his reckoning. If he had noted that the sepals are lepidote in T. gutteana he should have linked it with his T. pseudomacbrideana. An intriguing misjudgement which continues to this day. In fact there seems to be more differences between T. gutteana and T. macbrideana than there are between T. pseudomacbrideana and T. macbrideana.
I believe I have shown that Harry Luther's Alphabetical List of Bromeliad Binomials is in error in linking T. gutteana with T. macbrideana. However as a non-botanist, I can only plea for its reinstatement until a Botanist looks at this complex in more detail."
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